Washington: China's GDP growth is expected to decline to 2.3 per cent in the baseline scenario in 2020 due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the World Bank said in a report.

"In a rapidly changing environment, making precise growth projections is unusually difficult. Therefore, the report presents both a baseline and a lower case scenario. Growth in the developing EAP region is projected to slow to 2.1 percent in the baseline and to negative 0.5 in the lower case scenario in 2020, from an estimated 5.8 percent in 2019," it said.

"Growth in China is projected to decline to 2.3 percent in the baseline and 0.1 percent in the lower case scenario in 2020, from 6.1 percent in 2019. Containment of the pandemic would allow for a sustained recovery in the region, although risks to the outlook from financial market stress would remain high," the bank said.

The COVID-19, which broke out in China, has now spread across the globe.

Law suit filed:

American lawyer Larry Klayman and his advocacy group Freedom Watch has recently filed $20 Trillion lawsuit against Chinese authorities in the US over the Coronavirus outbreak which has hit nearly all the nations across the globe.

"Today Larry Klayman, the founder of both Judicial Watch and now Freedom Watch and a former federal prosecutor, announced the filing of a class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (20-cv-656) for damage caused by China with the release of the COVID-19 virus from a biological weapons facility in Wuhan China," Freedom Watch said in a statement recently.

"Klayman and his Freedom Watch did not file suit for political reasons, but rather to have a jury award damages to the victims of China's release of the COVID-19 virus, which has already killed many Americans, exposed huge numbers of others to death and harm, caused extreme emotional distress to loved ones and friends, and is on the verge of causing a near total stock market and economic collapse," it said.

"Klayman and his clients, which include those severely harmed by the release of the virus are seeking to do what our government will not: namely make Chinese government pay for the massive damage. Klayman had this to say upon filing suit," it said.

The virus outbreak, which is believed to have originated from China's Wuhan province, has also put a question mark on the future of the economic outlook of the world.

Chinese government silencing critics:

While China tries to combat COVID 19 and the backlash from the world for creating the virus, challenges are coming up from within its soil now as several journalists are fighting against the communist regime desperately attempting to silence its critics.

China’s journalists say it all started with the death of Dr Li Wenliang – a whistleblower whose attempt to warn the country about the coronavirus outbreak was silenced by the government, reported The Independent.

After contracting the disease, he passed away on Feb 6.

The death of the doctor triggered a major outrage in China and in the social media platforms when citizens even initiated a short-lived online campaign demanding freedom of speech.

Relevant posts were deleted by the Chinese government within hours, but the incident further strengthened citizens’ determination to preserve the truth of the coronavirus outbreak, reported the British newspaper.

“Li Wenliang was a normal guy with a good conscience and people see themselves in him,” Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Independent. “His death illustrates that anyone could die in this system of deception, suppression and zero accountability," he told the newspaper.

According to reports, several independent journalists at that point even tried to reveal the real picture in Wuhan region.

Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua were briefly popular after uploading rare video footage from Wuhan to Youtube and Twitter. However, all three were soon forced into disappearance by the government in February and have not been seen in public since, reported The Independent.

“The government doesn’t want Chinese citizens to have access to information that contradicts the official narrative, so they always try to silence whistleblowers by taking them out of the picture,” Chen told The Independent.

Supplying faulty kits worldwide:

Joining nations like Spain and the Czech Republic, the Netherlands has now recalled hundreds of thousands of face masks they had imported from China after they were found to be defective, media reports said.

Dutch authorities received 1.3 million face masks from China on March 21 and distributed some of them to health care providers battling against the spread of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, reported Euro News.

But the health ministry "received a signal that, upon inspection, the quality of this shipment did not meet the required standards," it said in a statement sent to Euronews.

"A second test also proved that the face masks did not meet the required quality standards. It has now been decided to stop the use of this entire shipment," read the statement.